Originally Posted by ToddMcF2002
I agree with everything you said, but the melee system gets killed in the process. Arx wasnt very good, nor was Dark Messiah and Oblivion was pretty bad. Shield blocking was cool but thats about it.

I disagree so much about Dark Messiah. The #1 great thing about Dark Messiah was the combat — superb use of physical to give a really visceral feel as things get kicked and knocked around, great mix of different approaches you could take (run in and hit em over the head with your sword, interesting strategic spells like freeze, looking for things in the environment to break and throw, sneaking around to do things like kick enemies over ledges, etc), and the fantastic rope arrow allowing you to do things like climb up into rafters to get people from above.

Dark Messiah combat to me is the pinnacle so far of what real time first person combat can be in an RPG. It wasn't perfect (kicking was lots of fun but probably over-powered), but to me it was an absolute blast. That said, I can certainly see why some people wouldn't like it if they just don't like first person games (I also find combat in things like HL2 great fun), but for that style it is superb.

And as far as Oblivion goes, though nowhere near the level of Dark Messiah, I thought its combat was a great improvement over Morrowind. The most frustrating thing about Oblivion to me was though it greatly improved some things over Morrowing, it seemed to have the same number of significant steps backwards (such as the way over-done level scaling).

On the other hand, I found Fallout 3 an improvement in every way over Oblivion (surprisingly more interesting and varied world, much better level scaling with a feeling of progression, etc)… so I am hopeful that the next Elder Scrolls will be more in the right direction.